So long, NeXTstep!

Well, Mac OS X 10.5 “Tiger” has been released. As usual, it’s feature-packed, and goes faster than the previous release on the same hardware. And as usual, Apple has deprecated and dropped several legacy features. It seems with every release, there’s a little less of NeXTstep hiding under the covers.

In Leopard, Input Managers are no longer supported, and are severely restricted. Now I know why this is being done – there is great potential for Input Manager malware. Also, Input Managers were never suitable for system-wide input because they didn’t work with Carbon applications. But I’m sad to see them go. Mac-style Input Method components are a far less elegant way of performing the same task (albeit with far lower potential for evil), and the APIs Apple themselves use for writing new-style input methods still don’t seem to be documented on ADC.

The other thing that’s disappeared is NetInfo. It’s been replaced by Directory Services. I guess it’s time for us to learn to configure static hostname resolution, DHCP/BootP/NetBoot servers, unusual account settings, and all the rest of it all over again.